According to the Content Marketing Institute, 93% of marketers are using content marketing in 2014. They also go on to confirm that only 33% of these same marketers feel they are effective.

Why are the other two thirds not getting traction?

Creating great content is pointless, if it doesn't reach the desired audience.

Quite often the quickest and most effective way to distribute content is to use paid media.

This is especially the case if you are a less established business, without organic website traffic or massive facebook or twitter followings.

Using a paid content marketing distribution tool like Outbrain, is probably the quickest way to seed your content online with great results.

Outbrain Features and Tips:

Outbrain's comprehensive reporting can show you the "publishers" and "sections" your content has been distributed on.

Your content will be seeded in the "From Around the Web" section of amazing websites, like smh.com.au. Outbrain has the smarts to serve your content on contextually relevant sites, as well as sites relevant to the user based on their cookies and browsing activity.

Ensure 'geotargeting' is set to a country, state, or city level. Geotargeting is used to control the geographic regions your content is targeted to. This can be as specific or as broad as you like - be careful with being too specific (City level) as it may be too narrow. You may need to write to an Outbrain account rep to achieve city specific geotargeting anyway, as it is sometimes a manual process on their end.

Remember, this traffic will show up under the "paid.outbrain" referrer in Google Analytics, so you will be able to see exactly how much ROI your paid content marketing campaign is driving for you.

Having a lead capture form or social share and follow buttons at the bottom of your content can be a great way to make the most of your paid content marketing traffic.